You've probably never heard of Miss Lavelle White before. The Austin Music Hall of fame inductee began her career of rhythm and blues in the 1950s and released her latest album, "Into the Mystic," in 2003. She's done it all without being played on mainstream radio or shooting a music video; but she does have a showcase on the Internet. Currently, White is listed as a "spotlight" artist on musicaustin.com, an online resource that hosts information for more than 600 independent Austin musicians.
While getting radio exposure is considered a distant dream for many local Austin musicians, alternative promotional strategies and avenues of exposure by way of the Internet are becoming increasingly popular. Not only are more Austin bands self-produced, but many find Web sites like CDbaby.com, iTunes Music Store and musicaustin.com perfect places to fulfill their dream of rock stardom.
Make that Celtic sci-fi folk stardom, if you're Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards.
Pronounced brAHb'ding-näg-EE-en, the band's music features traditional Celtic instruments with lyrics about topics ranging from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to "Lord of the Rings." As a result, the band sells a lot of CDs at sci-fi conventions like Aggiecon in College Station, the largest and oldest student-run sci-fi convention.
Gunn says a lot of his band's success comes from the Web sites that he has created. Currently, Gunn is in charge of bardscrier.com, a free marketing "e-zine" with promotional tips, as well as texasmusicians.net, an "online resource for helping Texas musicians promote themselves," he said.
The Internet, Gunn says, is the Brobdingnagian Bards' main method for getting exposure and popularity. It's also where the Bards find the music they listen to the most.
"Most of [the] music I find is completely online," Gunn says. "I pretty much stopped listening to commercial radio."
According to Gunn, commercial radio, such as Clear Channel, is outdated.
"They'll still get a lot of people who aren't computer savvy or want to be manipulated by the masses, I dare say," Gunn said.
The Brobdingnagian Bards and many other Austin bands have distributed their music online for free or for sale on Web sites such as CDbaby.com.
The results have been profitable. "My band focused on free music downloads, and we've built a huge following," he said.
Even though people can download all the Bards' music for free, many people also buy their albums to support the band, Gunn said. This year, without any mainstream radio play, The Austin Chronicle voted the Brobdingnagian Bards "Best Novelty Music Group."
Underground only
Though you may not hear the Brobdingnagian Bards play on a Clear Channel station, one station you will most likely hear them on is UT's very own KVRX radio station. Alyx Vesey, a journalism senior and volunteer DJ/programming director for KVRX, says KVRX makes a point not to play mainstream music. Once an artist gets airtime on mainstream radio, KVRX stops playing them.
"For every band that does get on a major radio station, there are 100 out there that don't," she says. "It's really hard to get a break."
The station tries to help out the local scene in other ways as well. One station rule states that each KVRX radio show play at least two Texan artists, and Tuesday night the station airs live-local recordings. There is even a show devoted to Texan music: "Stars at Night" starts every Saturday morning at 1 a.m. and plays two hours of music from Texas artists.
Vesey says that radio airtime is not the only thing that gives a band success; local press is another important factor that helps bands make it big.
While KVRX's goal is to promote local bands, some musicians don't feel that KVRX is the best channel to promote independent bands.
For Adam Luikart of "Friends of Lizzy," KVRX is ideal to listen to, but because he never hears the same thing twice on the station, he says it is not equally ideal for the promotion of his band.
Luikart, a Plan II graduate and bass player for the five-year-old Austin band "Friends of Lizzy," says he finds 101.5 KROX to be the best mainstream radio station for promotion of local music.
He says 101.5 has gone from an "almost unlistenable" station a year ago, to a "really pretty cool" station attempting to break out of the mainstream mold.
Andy Langer, music writer for Esquire magazine and the Austin Chronicle as well as News 8 Austin's weekly music correspondent, also has a radio show on KROX entitled "Next Big Thing" that airs every Sunday night from 6-10 p.m. and features Austin's local rock music. Luikart says his band's music is sometimes heard on this show.
Just because "Friends of Lizzy" can be heard on mainstream Austin radio occasionally does not mean the band is making lots of dough.
"If we have, I haven't seen any of it," Luikart says.
To have a "viable" band, Luikart says, costs more money than most would imagine. The profits that a band earns from shows and other venues don't go into the members' pockets, but usually end up going back into band maintenance and promotion.
Some of the money "Friends of Lizzy" made was spent making a music video for Austin Music Network, a move he says was the biggest in terms of getting exposure. While the music video has been a good promotional move, the band hasn't turned its back on its Austin fans.
"We like it because we get to make a one-on-one connection to people who like our stuff," Luikart says.
The iTunes Music Store, a place where you can already find the Brobdingnagian Bards, will soon also host "Friends of Lizzy."
"If you've got a band and a CD then there's a good chance you'll get on iTunes," says Luikart.
Going mainstream
Clear Channel radio currently owns six stations in Austin including KPEZ 102.3, KISS 96.7, Jammin' 105.9, Sports Radio 1300, KVET and KASE 101, according to Mac Daniels, regional vice president for Clear Channel. To localize their radio stations, Daniels said "we don't look at it as being local or unlocal music."
"If it's good music, it's good music," he says adding that each station has its own criteria based on listener demands.
In other words, each station is localized by survey, he says. Every year Clear Channel sends a selection of chart-topping songs in each genre to its respective radio stations around the country. They survey local people, giving them the choice of over 800 songs to choose from, and make their playlists based on these choices. Daniels says about 600 of these 800 songs are chosen and played.
In addition to surveys, Daniels says that each week stations like KVET sift through local music and choose the "best of the best" local music to be played on the station's list of local music.
To address concerns that Clear Channel stations are homogenized, Clear Channel Regional Vice President Market Manager Dusty Black said that this misconception must be based on the fact that so many of their stations share the same names: KISS, MIX, etc.
Black said the reason why there are so many KISS stations is simply because Clear Channel loves the name. That doesn't mean the playlists are all the same, he said.
"There are no national playlists for Clear Channel," Black said.
Yet, "Friends of Lizzy" bassist Luikart says that Clear Channel's playlists are too tiny, making Clear Channel "an exceptionally negative force" on radio.
Local Austinite Rob Vining feels the same way. To solve this problem, he started radioaid.com as a source of streaming global-independent music with the added goal of "giving listeners the chance to hear groups that dodge the pitfalls of the music industry and create music that you can't pigeon hole as sounding just like this or that band," as stated on its Web site.
"All the small guys have no chance to put their music on radio, unless they have $5000," Vining said. To be added to a playlist, a fee known as an "add" must be paid first. Vining calls this "the unwritten rule of FM radio," because it dodges the payola system: the illegal paying of radio stations by record labels to play specific music.
To protest this system, Vining created clearchannelsucks.net, a Web site providing "specific information about the radio and music industry to musicians and artists around the globe," according to the site.
Vining says on clearchannelsucks.net that the "more knowledge you have about the industry, the less likely you will run into the same problems other artists have encountered."
Another online resource available for bands and listeners is musicaustin.com. Virginia DeBolt, the site's creator, refers to her creation as "the encyclopedia of the Austin Music scene." Starting by listing information for one or two bands, musicaustin.com now provides biographies, album covers and contact information for over 600 past and present Austin musicians. DeBolt only lists musicians from Austin, never takes any bands off and works without a budget.
With ten years of experience learning about Austin music under her belt, DeBolt says Internet exposure makes it easier for Austin bands to stand out.
Artists like Luikart say they would allow their bands to be played on big corporate radio if they could, but until then will use resources on the Internet to display and expose themselves.
Gunn says, "If Clear Channel really loved us they could put us on their radio stations, but our music style would never do well on Clear Channel."
"There are so many bands in Austin, it's hard to stand out," says DeBolt, but that national distribution is not essential to making it big. The challenge to local artists nowadays is not making it big on the radio, but making it big on the Internet.
"It takes so much effort to keep abreast on what's going on," says Luikart.
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